On youth, complexity and an expanding universe

Perhaps people reading my posts at CE’s guest blog now think that I have an obsession with environment and such. That I am a single issue person. Well, I’m not. If I have one shortcoming (except lazyness, impatience, lack of manners, and being bored way too soon) it’s that I am interested in way too many subjects and am expert at none. Other side of the medal is that I read and think all the time. Because I know I don’t know shit.

One of the remarkable things about discovering the concept of complexity through discovering Dave Snowdens work, is that I now understand way better why I can’t know, let alone understand, everything. Understanding has been a huge issue for me from about my 2th year on this earth. Since five or six I read like crazy. Hoping I would start to understand how the world is, how and why people are as they are, what matters and why. What the rules are.

I am fifty now, and I haven’t figured it out. Still remember a conversation with my mother, we were sitting in a car. I – eight or nine – asked: how can it be that the universe expands, but never arrives? How can infinity grow if it’s already infinite? She was silent for a while, steering the car, then said: I don’t know. And after a some more time: You know, you get used to it. To not understanding.

Then, her answer upset me tremendously. I thought: how can grown-up people live like this, willingly accepting that they don’t mind things that are so very important? Later I started to understand and appreciate her answer, and to love her for her honesty. What she said was real. To a certain extent we all live like this, blind to what’s important because of other, more pressing matters.

Returning to pressing matters and the subject of my posts: Sir David Attenborough – remember his wonderful BBC nature series? – has become a sponsor of Optimum Population Trust.